Glory to the Filmmaker!
Director: Takeshi Kitano

Japanese stand-up comedian turned director "Beat" Takeshi Kitano is one strange duck. Alternating between ethereal drama, off-the-wall screwball comedy and hardened yakuza action films, his repertoire is as multi-faceted as a diamond and just as shiny. With every film a departure from the last, often the only consistency in his work is Kitano himself, usually front and center performing quadruple-duty as writer, editor, director and actor. But even within the context of Beat Takeshi, his latest film, Glory to the Filmmaker! is awfully strange.

Actually, using the word "strange" would be to perform disservice and insult to the word itself. "Strange" feels abstract and foreign in this context, a word that once had a wide scope of definition and meaning. Now, after viewing Glory to the Filmmaker! the word feels oddly meaningless; empty, as if stripped of relevance.

A 104 minute systematic dismantling of Kitano's eighteen-year cinematic career assembled incorrectly, like a dropped jigsaw puzzle, Glory to the Filmmaker! contains all elements of Kitano's past work—the introspective drama, slapstick comedy, gunplay, sword fighting, reminiscence of the innocence of childhood—but sandwiched together into a disorientating paste, shoved down the throat of the viewer in a single bite. Forget about plot, narrative, structure—these are all abstract concepts here. This is more Monty Python than Japanese cinema, a complete postmodern film in every way, deconstructing the director's craft into a Buster Keaton-esque nightmare of slapstick and demented sensibilities. Glory to the Filmmaker! is a film created for exactly one person—Kitano—but which Kitano is not made clear: the actor, writer, director, celebrity, best selling author, or the metallic replica dummy which stands in for Kitano during the film at odd times as a running gag.

The premise, such as it is: it is time for famous Japanese director Takeshi Kitano to make a new film, but the director seems thoroughly out of ideas. Having foolishly announced his departure from yakuza dramas for good, his films have been failing at the box office. So what next? An introspective retirement film in Ozu styled homage? A nostalgic film about the 1950's? Another chanbara? A J-horror film? He hasn't made one of those yet. Ideas take form and are shot down as quickly as they emerge. Perhaps a sci-fi apocalyptic end-of-the-world adventure, Hollywood style?

Kitano doesn't just break the fourth wall with Glory to the Filmmaker!; he uses it as the cornerstone to construct his house. In essence, Glory to the Filmmaker! is an hour and a half conversation between the director and himself about what his next film should be, realizing that a) he has no idea what people want to see, and b) what he ultimately settles on is so insane, nobody gets it. As the ideas unfold, Glory to the Filmmaker! takes shape as a jumbled collection of sequences combining all elements of previous Kitano films, both real and imaginary, with a never-ending stream of cameo appearances from past films reprising their "roles" (again, both real and imagined.) It is the Kitano movie to end all Kitano movies, quite literally, what with that comet still on a collision course with Earth...

With the possible exception of Woody Allen, few auters blend so thoroughly the line between writer and actor, director and movie star, human being and imagined character. In Glory to the Filmmaker!, Kitano is all of these elements and more, a cross-section of cutout characters, comedians, gangsters, fathers, old men, romantics and directors, with no distinction made between any element. The film exists in the real world and in the most impossible elements of cinema magic, complete with metal stand-in dummies, mad scientists, blind painters, professional wrestlers, millionaires, bullet-dodging superheroes and every other impossibility dug from mad Kitano's brain.

Equal parts hilarious irreverence to maddening frustration, Glory to the Filmmaker! may trump Getting Any? as Kitano' most aggravating and antagonizing creation to-date. For those familiar with his previous film, Takeshis', the description of this film will sound oddly familiar, for good reason. Indeed, in many ways, this feels like Takeshis' 2, a continuation of the deconstruction/annihilation of Kitano in celluloid form. But now, with this newest film, we can see both as spiritual kin; Takeshis' was to "Beat" Takeshi (actor) what Glory to the Filmmaker! is to Takeshi Kitano (director), each opposite faces of the same coin/person/whatever.

Like 8 1/2 put through a Japanese blender and spiked with LSD, Glory to the Filmmaker!is ultimately a film about the relationship between the filmmaker and their craft. Reality takes a permanent backseat to wild flights of imagination, illusion and ego, and determining where the filmmaker starts and the film ends is impossible. Are we watching a movie, or simply a loosely collected sequence of ideas sketched randomly on the screen? Is this a confession or a joke? Do we laugh, or demand our money back? To the latter question, I suspect the latter question would amuse him if the answer from his audience was "both".

When Glory to the Filmmaker! is good, it is full-out brilliant, tangy and acerbic in its wit, humor and good-natured deconstruction. When the film is bad, it is teeth-gnashingly infuriating, like a never-ending inside joke you are repeatedly excluded from. Worse, it is a joke made only for one, a number so inherently contrary to the art of film making. Frustratingly self-referential, obtuse, random and aggravating, Glory to the Filmmaker! can be painfully hard upon the audience, as if we, as beings who are not Kitano are unwelcome inside his private ego party. Comedic scenes of such bizarre taste and agonizing length run rampant throughout the film, so open in their lousiness that they must be deliberate. I admit to considering walking out at one point, an action I never take to any film, five minutes into a never-ending stuttering sequence of kabuki-clad dancers with gigantic red plastic penises strapped to their groin, thrusting and grinding, playing their "instrument" to the soundtrack, a furious guitar solo.

What saves Glory to the Filmmaker! from incomprehension (and the trash bin) is the humor, every fractured and disjointed bit of it It is the ultimate act of attrition, of self-sacrifice to reduce an entire career into a sequence of parody, physical comedy and sex jokes. Like the title suggests, this is a film that glorifies the filmmaker at the cost of his very existence, laid bare to all to poke fun at. Even during its moments of utter incomprehension and annoyance, the joy of the craft is obvious in every frame. Even when the audience isn't having fun, you know Kitano is—sure, he may have turned his entire career into a joke, but it's his joke, and he's having a ball.

Hilarious, disoriented and completely insane from start to finish, there is not a filmmaker alive making films like Takeshi Kitano, and after Glory to the Filmmaker!, I have no idea if this is a good thing or not. I suspect I was just witness to something subversive, brilliant and riotously original, but I can't quite get those gigantic red penises out of my head. What the hell was that about?

Verdict: 80/100